Standing strong: a case study of Concordia Children’s Services on the sustainability of child caring agencies.

Abstract

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that there are around 153 million orphaned children in the whole world (UNICEF, 2011). And among this statistic, 1.8 million is in the Philippines out of the 34 million children under the age of 18. The Philippines is an archipelagic country with around 89 million people under its jurisdiction. Throughout the years, the Philippines has made significant economic progress in their globalization efforts. For example, the inflation and population growth continues to outrun that progress resulting in a population with around 40% living below poverty level and 12% without any employment at all. Furthermore there are 117 chartered cities in 79 provinces and there are also 41,936 villages spread out amongst the islands, which made it logistically difficult and cost prohibitive for development of infrastructure and social programs. It is without a doubt that the Philippine government has made significant progress in prioritizing the convention on the Rights of the Child. However, social services to support this convention are slow in development by a government that spends a fixed percentage to pay off its debts to other countries (Orphans Lifeline International, 2012). Given this difficulty to balance other factors while giving help to social services, there are a number of child caring agencies who have closed down due to lack of capability to support its own services. The sheer impact of the number of orphaned and abandoned children is overwhelming, add to the fact that maintaining a functional organization is a difficult and heavy responsibility. Research by the World Bank in Kenya (2010), for example, found the cost of operating orphanages to be six times higher than the cost of caring for children in the community (Gitonga, 2010). [Introduction]